Rich,
Show me where I said that "splash up" didn't occur. In fact, I cited the front bunkers on 8 & 13 as evidence that it did, creating a new, higher top line that affects green contour as you noted.
That being said, I would note two things;
1) That fact does not change in the least the fact that the bunkers originally had sand flashed to the top lip. All that splashing phenomenon did was make the top lip higher than original. It does not change the fundamental fact that EVERY picture of Merion from the 1920s and 30s from ground level shows this clearly. Have you ever seen them? They are very good images and I didn't have to be wearing a fedora and dancing with Grace Kelly's mom to call a spade a spade. What's more, those same pictures show a very rough-hewn look with plantings that I described earlier. If this was a "restoration", why are those now GONE?? Furthermore, one could reasonably assume that the Merion bunkers looked like this from inception, given Chick Evans nicknaming them in 1916, three years after the course was built.
2) Those higher top edges from sand splash were "retained" by the Fazio group. In other words, there was no attempt to lower the faces to their 1930 original size. Instead, there WAS an attempt to dig to the original bottoms, but not to lower the top edges, so many claim the bunkers are now deeper. From my point of view, this was a compromise that recognized that they would be affecting green contours in a true restoration, so either out of expediency or fear, they were left as is. Instead, they just covered them deeper in bluegrass facing, lest they blow the bunker woll budget, apparently.
I know nothing about the bunker evolution at Shinnecock except that the Flynn bunkering of Shinnie I've seen in pictures in Geoff Shackleford's book appears to be much more numerous and much more unkempt than what I've seen in pictures from today. I'm hoping to get there this spring and see for myself.